WOD Nasiriyah

Jake Worthington joined the United States Marine Corps in June of 2000. He experienced battle up close and personal while deployed to Iraq. After he was discharged, Worthington began drinking heavily.

“I was a combat veteran,” he says. “I can do whatever I want and nobody can say shit to me because … I had honorably earned the ability to live the rest of my life however I wanted to, which included a lot of drinking.”

In 2009, Worthington’s brother, Jordan Gravatt, invited him to spectate at the CrossFit Games.

“That was my first experience in CrossFit, watching the end of the 2009 Games,” Worhington says. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty interesting stuff.’”

In 2013, Worthington opened CrossFit Incinerator in Temecula, California. Every year on March 23, members of his affiliate complete a workout called Nasiriyah in remembrance of the soldiers who died on that day in 2003. Worthington used to commemorate the day by drinking.

“(The workout) is a better representation of honoring the sacrifice than drinking,” he says. “It’s a better representation for me to spend my day investing in other people considering I lived through a pretty remarkable experience, rather than paying for overpriced drinks at some bar.”